


The Blood on His Hands

by robolife



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Descriptive gore, Eye Trauma, Gen, elias gets what he deserves, jon blaming himself for everything, s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 10:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17806499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robolife/pseuds/robolife
Summary: cw: graphic descriptions of eye traumaThere was an easy part and a hard part. But it would be worth it. It had to be worth it.It was all he had to offer.





	The Blood on His Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you listen to the new ep and a what if scenario gets stuck in your head and sometimes you just have to write it that night and post it the next day. No overarching speculations after what happened with ep126, just some angst and gore, as one does.

Getting five minutes alone with Elias was the easiest part of the whole thing. He had next to nothing in terms of material goods left to his name, but he was still getting paychecks, and since he barely needed to eat anymore the money sat unused in his account, forgotten except the rare instances when he had to travel. So it was easy, taking out a large portion and palming it to the sectioned officer in charge of the visit. It was easy. Just leave him alive- he had to anyway, he was doing this so he  _ wouldn’t _ get them hurt anymore, he wouldn’t risk them by calling Elias’ bluff. Not after all that had happened.

Besides, what he was about to do would be much, much worse.

For both of them. 

Elias had that horrible, smug grin on his face still, after everything. Like he was always ten steps ahead. He spoke to him, Jon could see his mouth moving, could practically feel the words slinking across his skin like eels. Too bad the static in his ears was ringing too loud for him to hear. Too bad it was all he could do to keep himself from vomiting as he forced his body to continue on with his plan. The body that should have died. The body that was only still above ground because of an entity he was about to try and cripple, however minutely he could. 

Sometime between his not sitting down and his circling around to behind Elias the other man had stopped talking, trying not to look confused, not to look  _ scared _ as he tried to crane his neck around to keep an eye on him. As if that would give him any better insight. 

It was so easy, this part, because Elias was chained to the table; he couldn’t escape. He could scream all he wanted but it was  _ Jon _ who had to resist the searing pain that came from their horrendous god. 

And oh, did he scream. It was the only thing he heard over the static, as he plunged fingers into his eye sockets and pulled out the wet, writhing organs. They made a  _ pop _ when they came out, still connected. He pulled them out completely one at a time, ignoring the hands jerking on the table, the legs convulsing so wildly they’d kicked the chair out beneath them. It didn’t matter. Nothing Elias could fight back with would compare to the horrible sensation of knives scraping across his very mind as he took two of the Beholding’s eyes away and reduced them to a smear on the concrete of the private room.

He stepped back then, the blood covering his hands, trailing down his arms as the officer entered the room and whistled. Elias was howling. He was howling in pain and rage and agony and he was very much alive. And he was very much blind. Jon had taken his entire purpose away from him without so much as a warning. 

Jon himself wouldn’t be so lucky. 

The officer was kind enough to let him wash off the blood in the bathroom before escorting him out, no questions asked. No one asked many questions any more, not even him. Not even when they threatened to choke him if he kept them locked away. He wouldn’t be giving that god forsaken eye any more knowledge. He would deny it what it wanted. He would hurt it like it had hurt him. 

Who knows how many days out of a coma. He was more tired than ever. 

The sectioned officer had assured him that Lukas wouldn’t get wind of what had happened until Elias was able to phone him, and that wouldn’t be until after he was given some medical attention. Maybe a sedative, if they couldn’t get him to stop writhing. 

Plenty of time to get back to the archives.

Plenty of time to find Basira.

Plenty of time to tell her to not let anyone into the tunnels, to not let  _ him _ out, until he was done.

“Done with what, exactly?”

“You’ll know.”

She hadn’t asked anything else. Maybe she could smell the scent of blood lingering on him. Maybe she could see it in his eyes that the only one getting hurt from this was him.

Maybe she just didn’t care enough anymore. 

He couldn’t really blame her. 

Reading the Leitner made him sick. He hated seeing that name scrawled in the cover. He hated the relief he was washed with at the new knowledge, the new sensations that came with the tunnels twisting and crawling and morphing just out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t risk being stopped, not now. Not when he’d come this far. 

He somehow doubted Elias would be stalled for long before calling Lukas. Calling to get his mess cleaned up again. Calling that vulture back down to the archives when he had no place here. 

Jon set the book down at the corner that had once been the entrance and walked exactly 50 paces away from it. He didn’t know how far the blood might splatter. 

This was the hard part.

He had a knife in his pocket, gleaming and sharp and dangerous. Too big to do a delicate job of it. Messy, overkill, but it would get the job done with fewer motions on his part. It didn’t need to be neat. It just needed to be done.

He just needed to do it.

Taking the knife out of his pocket felt like setting his hand on fire all over again. The phantom flames licked up his arm as he brought it out in front of him, grabbing with both hands to try and reduce the shaking. He felt like he was being crushed, like gravity was slowly but surely pressing down on him, not letting up. A cold sheen of sweat coated his skin and he could barely see, blackness reducing his field of vision to pin points. That was okay. It wasn’t hard to know where your eyes were. 

He lifted his arms millimeter by millimeter, minute by minute. It felt like dragging them through molten lava, like he was roasting alive, like he was going to explode any second. There was a roaring in his ears and he couldn’t be sure if it was that terrible power bearing down on him or if it was just his blood, rushing through his body in terror. He couldn’t hear anything past it, but he was sure he was screaming by now. 

He’s not certain how long it takes, but eventually the blade is right in front of his left eye. He stared as the pointed tip took up all that was left of his sight. He wanted to say it frightened him, but he’d been afraid for so long it didn’t feel any different. His whole body shook violently, but oddly enough the knife looked steadier than it had ever been. A fixed point. A moving target.

He wasn’t sure if he was still screaming, only because he wasn’t sure if he was breathing anymore. 

He refused to be the cause of any more deaths. Any more tragedies. He refused to watch nightmare after nightmare replay before his eyes even one more time. So he ignored how it felt like his body was being pulled apart and plunged the knife in. 

His scream couldn’t drown out the horrible, wet  _ squelch _ that he heard inside his skull as a pain worse than anything he’d ever experienced engulfed him. He dropped the knife in pure reflex, falling to his knees and curling in. This was the hard part. This was the hard part.

But he had to do it. 

He had to make sure the blood was on his hands this time and his hands only. 

He had to atone for what he’d done, and this was barely the start. 

So he forced fingers that felt like broken glass into his socket, grabbing the mutilated eye and pulling. The  _ pop _ of it leaving was so much worse when he heard it reverberate through his bones. He was still screaming as he pulled some more, he pulled and pulled and  _ pulled _ until finally it snapped, searing pain almost making him vomit, blackness overtaking his vision. 

That was alright for now, he was still holding the eye. Almost halfway done. 

He couldn’t trust himself to step on it like he had with Elias, so he felt wildly to his side, barely feeling the wall beyond the pain that permeated his entire body. He couldn’t describe it anymore, not even to himself. It was horrible, and wordless, a pure, gruesome torture that he could barely stay conscious through. What was left of his vision returned in splotches as he smeared his own eye across the wall until it was just another stain. 

Then he reached down, grabbed the knife, and started the process again. 

He wasn’t sure if he could hear voices at this point. Wasn’t sure if anyone shouting could make it through his own screaming and the horrible pain to his ears. Wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking. Hoping there was anyone who might care if they heard the results of what he had to do. 

It didn’t matter. 

He plunged the knife down again. And again. And again.

Barely holding onto consciousness really shot your aim. 

He got it eventually, though, the pain growing more and more as the knife once again clattered to the ground. He wasn’t sure how it could keep getting worse, when it already felt like he was in the ninth circle of hell. It didn’t matter. This would stop things, and he deserved it. He deserved all of it and more. He refused to let anyone else get sacrificed when he could lay himself upon the altar and deal the killing blow. 

His fingers were so slick at this point he wouldn’t have known he’d pulled the second one out if it wasn’t for the  _ pop _ and the sudden, loud, high pitched tone that permeated his entire head. It made him stumble, swaying on his feet as it felt like a pressure was released and put onto him all at once. He was almost done. He was almost to the end.

He found the wall again, only by tripping and slamming into it with his shoulder. He smeared his right eye into it until he couldn’t feel anything but a gorey mash beneath his fingertips. 

He thinks he might have stopped screaming by now. Not that the hyperventilating he  _ was _ doing was much better. It was done though. It was all done and they were safe from him. They were safe from the beholding. They were safe from Elias. 

He stayed there, slumped against the wall for… some amount of time. He didn’t know how long. He couldn’t even say if he passed out. Once he could, though, he stood up again. 

He walked 50 paces. 

He picked up the book. 

And Jonathan Simms, the Archivist, read a book he could no longer see.

He’d memorized the passage he needed beforehand, of course. But he felt the page through the blood coating his hand and knew he would never be free. He’d stopped it for now but the words flowed too easily from his mouth. He wanted to weep as the tunnels returned themselves to what they had been before his meddling. If only he could do the same to himself, all the way back. Before he’d picked up that book, the first one, the one that had doomed him. 

He could hear voices, distant and muffled, barely getting through everything in his head trying to drown out reality. He stumbled his way in their direction with nothing better to do, book hanging limply in one hand, the other on the wall, letting him know where a corner was. 

He heard gasps when he turned it. Quiet, too far from his detached mind for him to recognize right now. He stopped moving. 

Let them decide his fate. 

It was his due. 

If they left him here to rot, he would rot gladly. Even if it took a millennia for the eye to grow bored of him. 

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, the slight movement enough to make the book fall out of his slick, wet hands. It was Basira’s voice in his ear, telling him she saw what he meant.

“You were right,” Her voice dragged his attention closer to the surface, “I do know.” A tug on his arm, “Come on, let’s get you to the hospital before bleed out on us.”

He tilted his head, following where she pulled him, voice cracked and gnarled as he spoke, throat raw from screaming, “Us?” he asked, not sure if she was using it meaninglessly, or if he really had heard multiple voices. It had been so hard to hear, and he was so tired.

He felt… some sort of movement before she spoke again, “Oh, right- yea. Thought you’d heard us at least, but you were screaming pretty loud. They wanted to stop you, wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she explained, dragging him further forward. 

“They?” He asked again, words hollow and broken as they made it past his abused throat and lungs, “Who-,” he swallowed, trying to make it easier, “Who else?”

He heard a soft, quiet sound. So small and sad he was surprised he was able to hear it. It was somewhere… somewhere in front of him, to the side. There was the sound of feet shuffling, of quiet, huffed air and snatched, almost syllables. Like when you were mouthing something to someone across the room but couldn’t help the few sounds that managed to come out. 

So. he was being talked over already. Wonderful.

Then he swayed, the break in movement and conversation reminding him exactly how much pain he was in, pulsing with every pump of blood that oozed out where his eyes had been and down his face, dripping he presumed onto his shirt. The blood on his hands was beginning to dry. 

That seemed to kick Basira back into gear at the same time a familiar voice called his name, surprise and worry coloring it. Basira grabbed the arm she’d had earlier as a new hand grabbed his shoulder, trying to steady him. 

“Martin?” He asked, only managing a whisper, breathing growing steadily more ragged. He was tired, he was so, so tired.

“Jon,” The sadness in the voice broke his heart. Couldn’t he see? This was so he could be safe, he could leave now, if he wanted. He could do anything he wanted, as long as he was happy. That’s all Jon wanted at that point. He wanted them to be happy, and safe. There were too many deaths on his hands, too much misery and sorrow. He didn’t know if he could bear to take more.

“Jon, I’m so- I’m so sorry, I- we- I’m sorry,” Martin was crying even as they had to practically drag him the rest of the way out of the tunnels. He didn’t… want to think about why Martin would apologize to  _ him _ of all people, not right now. He faltered again, arms rushing to grab him before he fell.  _ Best not ruin the carpet now, Jon _ .

He heard doors open, Basira was calling an ambulance. There were too many noises and there was too much pain. He couldn’t let Martin stay like that, though. Not Martin. He deserved pain the least, especially pain he’d caused.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Martin.”

He heard Martin let out another sob as he finally lost his fight against unconsciousness. 

Maybe he wouldn’t wake up this time.

However many days after a coma, and he could finally rest. 


End file.
